This invention relates to retail coupon documents.
Previously proposed in Krost U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,990 is a retail coupon document in which two paper panels are glued together along their borders. Each panel thus presents a hidden side (which faces the hidden side of the other section) and an exposed side (which constitutes the front or rear side of the coupon document). Two coupons are imprinted on the exposed front side. Those document-opening instructions require the user to cut the panels along predefined overlapping division lines which are visible to the user on the exposed front side. The user is instructed to chose between two different division lines, depending upon whether the user is a user of the competitor's product or the sponsor's product. The user will reveal a coupon for the sponsor's product regardless of which division lines are chosen. However, the division lines presented to users of the competitor's product serve to destroy the lesser value coupon and reveal the greater value coupon, whereas the division lines presented to the user of the sponsor's product serve to destroy the greater value coupon and reveal the lesser value coupon.
The sponsor would issue or sponsor such a coupon document in order to target the users of the competitor's product and present them with an incentive for switching to the sponsor's product.
It is, however, an inconvenience for the user to have to use a scissors to make the necessary cut. Also, the presence of intersecting and overlapping division lines may cause confusion, resulting in the user accidentally cutting along the wrong lines.
A variation of the Krost coupon document has been previously proposed in which the coupon includes a means or tool for tearing along the division lines, namely, a pair of zipper pulls which are integral with a common one of the panels. Those zipper pulls which are defined by perforated lines, form manually actuable tools which effectively cut through one of the panels (but not the other panel) along the perforated division lines when pulled by the user. However, the presence of both pull tabs on the same panel may still lead to confusion on the part of the user. Also, after pulling one of the zipper pulls the user must still remove a portion of the sheet which contains the perforation lines of the other, nondestroyed coupon. Unless the user is careful, those division lines might inadvertently be severed, thereby destroying both coupons.